State, Indian group agree on satellite polling stations

Deal would allow early voting on three reservation counties

Jan. 30, 2014

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PIERRE — After months of acrimony, including legal battles and harsh words, Secretary of State Jason Gant and a group advocating for Native American voting rights have reached a tentative agreement.

In a meeting Wednesday in Pierre, Gant, representatives of the nonprofit Four Directions, and a collection of county auditors and other stakeholders agreed on a framework to spend state money to open early voting places in Native American population centers.

The plan could “if not double, even triple” voter participation in several Native-dominated communities, said O.J. Semans, Four Directions’ executive director.

At issue are Buffalo, Dewey and Jackson counties, where Indian reservations are dozens of miles from the county courthouses, where early voting takes place. That means taking advantage of South Dakota’s weeks of early voting requires long car rides for many residents of the poorest communities in the state.

Four Directions has asked Gant to set up satellite early voting centers in those Native communities. To pay the cost, the group suggested he tap the millions of dollars of federal money given to South Dakota for voting promotion under the Help America Vote Act.

Gant previously resisted the request, saying he wasn’t sure he had the authority to spend that money on early voting centers in counties with courthouses.

Now, a HAVA task force convened by Gant has agreed to fund early voting in areas that are poor, far away from courthouses and inhabited by residents unlikely to own cars.

The formula was proposed last month by Four Directions. On Wednesday, Gant and other members of the HAVA task force praised the formula.

“Over the past few meetings that we’ve had regarding the state HAVA plan, many great ideas have come forward, and we’ve implemented many of those,” Gant said.

One key wrinkle is that the federal agency that oversees HAVA funds, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, has so many vacant seats it’s unable to act officially. That means South Dakota can’t get a ruling whether early voting centers are a permissible use of HAVA money.

Staff at the EAC did tell Gant that South Dakota probably would be able to spend HAVA money on “activities detailed in your state HAVA plan.” Now he’s working to revise the state’s HAVA plan to include some mention of satellite early voting centers.

Under Gant’s plan, South Dakota would proceed with granting certain county requests for HAVA money for early voting. If the EAC were to acquire a full membership and rule South Dakota had acted improperly, the counties would have to reimburse the state for the expenses.

It costs around $15,000 to run an early voting center in one county for one election, Four Directions estimates.

In the 2012 election, Four Directions paid three counties’ early voting costs itself. A legislative panel recently rejected a proposal from Gant that would have put a stop to that.